As We Go To Press We Receive The Newly Published Volume, El Libro De
Marco Polo - Aus Dem Vermaechtnis Des Dr. Hermann Knust Nach Der Madrider
Handschrift Herausgegeben Von Dr. R. Stuebe.
Leipzig, Dr. Seele & Co.,
1902, 8vo., pp.
Xxvi.-114. It reproduces the old Spanish text of the
manuscript Z-I-2 of the Escurial Library from a copy made by Senor D. Jose
Rodriguez for the Society of the Spanish Bibliophiles, which, being
unused, was sold by him to Dr. Hermann Knust, who made a careful
comparison of it with the original manuscript. This copy, found among the
papers of Dr. Knust after his death, is now edited by Dr. Stuebe. The
original 14th century MS., written in a good hand on two columns, includes
312 leaves of parchment, and contains several works; among them we note:
1 deg., a Collection entitled Flor de las Ystorias de Oriente (fol.
1-104), made on the advice of Juan Fernandez de Heredia, Grand Master of
the Order of St. John of Jerusalem (1377), of which Marco Polo (fol.
50-104) is a part; 2 deg. and Secretum Secretorum (fol. 254 r-fol.
312 v.); this MS. is not mentioned in our List, App. F., II. p. 546,
unless it be our No. 60.
The manuscript includes 68 chapters, the first of which is devoted to the
City of Lob and Sha-chau, corresponding to our Bk. I., ch. 39 and 40 (our
vol. i. pp. 196 seqq.) ch. 65 (p. 111) corresponds approximatively to
our ch. 40, Bk. III. (vol. ii. p. 451); chs. 66, 67, and the last, 68,
would answer to our chs. 2, 3, and 4 of Bk. I. (vol i., pp. 45 seqq.). A
concordance of this Spanish text, with Pauthier's, Yule's, and the
Geographic Texts, is carefully given at the beginning of each of the 68
chapters of the Book.
Of course this edition does not throw any new light on the text, and this
volume is but a matter of curiosity.
13. - SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE.
One of the last questions in which Sir Henry Yule[2] took an interest in,
was the problem of the authorship of the book of Travels which bears the
name of SIR JOHN MANDEVILLE, the worthy Knight, who, after being for a
long time considered as the "Father of English Prose" has become simply
"the name claimed by the compiler of a singular book of Travels, written
in French, and published between 1357 and 1371."[3]
It was understood that "JOHAN MAUNDEUILLE, chiualer, ia soit ceo qe ieo ne
soie dignes, neez et norriz Dengleterre de la ville Seint Alban," crossed
the sea "lan millesme ccc'me vintisme et secund, le jour de Seint
Michel,"[4] that he travelled since across the whole of Asia during the
14th century, that he wrote the relation of his travels as a rest after his
fatiguing peregrinations, and that he died on the 17th of November, 1372,
at Liege, when he was buried in the Church of the Guillemins.
No work has enjoyed a greater popularity than Mandeville's; while we
describe but eighty-five manuscripts of Marco Polo's, and I gave a list of
seventy-three manuscripts of Friar Odoric's relation,[5] it is by
hundreds that Mandeville's manuscripts can be reckoned. As to the printed
editions, they are, so to speak, numberless; Mr. Carl Schoenborn[6] gave
in 1840, an incomplete bibliography; Tobler in his Bibliographia
geographica Palestinae (1867),[7] and Roehricht[8] after him compiled a
better bibliography, to which may be added my own lists in the
Bibliotheca Sinica[9] and in the T'oung-Pao.[10]
Campbell, Ann. de la Typog. neerlandaise, 1874, p. 338, mentions a Dutch
edition: Reysen int heilighe lant, s.l.n.d., folio, of which but two
copies are known, and which must be dated as far back as 1470 [see p.
600], I believed hitherto (I am not yet sure that Campbell is right as to
his date) that the first printed edition was German, s.l.n.d., very likely
printed at Basel, about 1475, discovered by Tross, the Paris
Bookseller.[11] The next editions are the French of the 4th April,
1480,[12] and 8th February of the same year,[13] Easter being the 2nd of
April, then the Latin,[14] Dutch,[15] and Italian[16] editions, and
after the English editions of Pynson and Wynkin de Worde.
In what tongue was Mandeville's Book written?
The fact that the first edition of it was printed either in German or in
Dutch, only shows that the scientific progress was greater and printing
more active in such towns as Basel, Nuremberg and Augsburg than in others.
At first, one might believe that there were three original texts, probably
in French, English, and vulgar Latin; the Dean of Tongres, Radulphus of
Rivo, a native of Breda, writes indeed in his Gesta Pontificum
Leodiensium, 1616, p. 17: "Hoc anno Ioannes Mandeuilius natione Anglus
vir ingenio, & arte medendi eminens, qui toto fere terrarum orbe
peragrato, tribus linguis peregrinationem suam doctissime conscripsit,
in alium orbe nullis finibus clausum, loegeque hoc quietiorem, & beatiorem
migrauit 17. Nouembris. Sepultus in Ecclesia Wilhelmitarum non procul a
moenibus Ciuitatis Leodiensis." The Dean of Tongres died in 1483;[17] Mr.
Warner, on the authority of the Bulletin de l'Inst. Archeol. Liegeois,
xvi. 1882, p. 358, gives 1403 as the date of the death of Radulphus.
However, Mandeville himself says (Warner, Harley, 4383) at the end of
his introduction, p. 3: - "Et sachez qe ieusse cest escript mis en latyn
pur pluis briefment deuiser; mes, pur ceo qe plusours entendent mieltz
romantz qe latin, ieo lay mys en romance, pur ceo qe chescun lentende et
luy chiualers et les seignurs et lez autres nobles homes qi ne sciuent
point de latin ou poy, et qount estee outre meer, sachent et entendent, si
ieo dye voir ou noun, et si ieo erre en deuisant par noun souenance ou
autrement, qils le puissent adresser et amender, qar choses de long temps
passez par la veue tornent en obly, et memorie de homme ne puet mye tot
retenir ne comprendre." From this passage and from the Latin text:
"Incipit itinerarius a terra Angliae ad partes Iherosolimitanas et in
ulteriores transmarinas, editus primo in lingua gallicana a milite suo
autore anno incarnacionis Domini m. ccc.
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